A Price to Pay

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘Shit. I really hope the forensics supports his version of events. I might be able to persuade ACC Naseem to bury what happened after Martinez snatched up the gun, but I can’t do anything to help him if it turns out that the gun didn’t go off accidentally when he wrestled with Frankie, and he shot him deliberately.’

  Sunday 22 November

  Chapter 57

  The death of another colleague. Warren felt a hollow ache inside him. It had been fifteen months since Gary Hastings had been killed, but Shaun Grimshaw’s death had brought back so many of the same emotions. Grief, anger and the feeling of helplessness at the unfairness of it all were foremost. They were police officers; dedicated public servants who did their best to make society safer. Since leaving uniform, the knowledge that every new shift had the potential to bring him face-to-face with danger or even death, had receded somewhat. Despite his best efforts, Warren spent increasing amounts of his time behind a desk; his forays into the field were typically after the crime that he was investigating had finished, and the danger already safely contained.

  And so it came as an even bigger shock when Warren or his team were faced with such a dangerous situation. Shaun Grimshaw had started his day like any other, never expecting that the raid on the Cullens’ farm would result in anything more unpleasant than some foul language. And now he was lying in Professor Jordan’s morgue being cut open, prodded and probed.

  Other, even less welcome feelings vied with the grief and anger, the main one being guilt. Guilt that another colleague had been killed. Should he have waited for another armed response unit, so that each search team had more AFOs? That way, when Paddy Cullen had taken out the first AFO, there would have been another armed officer who could have protected Grimshaw and Martinez.

  Then there was the feeling of guilt and hypocrisy that he should be standing here eulogizing a man that he hadn’t really liked. Shaun Grimshaw had been a difficult, sometimes unpleasant, man to work with. Warren had called him into his office on several occasions to berate him for his choice of language and lack of respect towards victims and suspects alike.

  Warren himself had never referred to Martinez and Grimshaw as the Brownnose Brothers – at least not in work – but hadn’t he joked about them behind their back? Rachel Pymm in particular had butted heads with Grimshaw many times. Could Warren have done a better job playing peacemaker?

  However, now was not the time for self-recrimination. It had been a little over twenty-four hours since Grimshaw’s death and Warren had convened the team for a moment’s reflection in memory of their fallen colleague.

  Grimshaw had worked alongside Martinez down at Welwyn before their current posting, and so the room was full of members of Bergen’s SOC team, as well as Middlesbury CID. Warren had spent the past day forcing himself to interact with the man who may well have been behind the whole affair. He hoped that any coldness on his part had been dismissed as grief and anger.

  Grayson had offered to say a few words on Warren’s behalf, but Warren refused to relinquish his responsibility; he had been Grimshaw’s line manager, so it was his duty. Later that day, he would be meeting Grimshaw’s parents to express his condolences.

  Warren took a deep breath. ‘Shaun Grimshaw was a hardworking, dedicated officer, who died doing what he loved.’

  There were mutters of assent around the room. Warren caught Martinez’s eye, who gave a brief nod. Rachel Pymm gave Martinez’s shoulder a squeeze. The two officers hadn’t always got on, but Pymm was too kind to let that matter at time like this.

  ‘I only worked with Shaun for the past six months, but he proved himself to be a capable officer who I believe will … would have gone far.’ Warren took a deep breath. ‘As you all know, Shaun had a … unique wit.’ There were sad smiles around the room. ‘And despite our sorrow, I want us to remember the happier times that we shared.

  ‘Shaun was born and bred in Manchester and was a fanatical devotee of Manchester City Football Club, as most of you are no doubt aware.’ There were a few more smiles around the room. ‘Now as many of you probably know, football is not my strong suit and I was born and brought up in Coventry, and so it would seem natural to me, upon seeing Shaun’s branded cigarette lighter to say “Play Up Sky Blues” by way of an introduction. How was I to know that they play in practically identical kits?’

  There were a few chuckles.

  ‘At least I didn’t assume that he was a supporter of Manchester United.’

  More laughter.

  ‘Working with Shaun was an education and a privilege, and I ask you to join me in a moment of silence in his memory.’

  The room fell silent.

  After a respectful pause, Martinez got to his feet. ‘If I may?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Warren. Pymm reached over and rubbed Martinez’s back encouragingly. He turned and gave her a brief smile.

  ‘Shaun was my best mate.’ His voice caught. ‘We joined Herts Constabulary on the same day. Shaun was even more out of place than I was; I had at least spent three years studying criminology at Anglia Ruskin University, and was used to being so far south.’ A few people laughed. ‘Shaun had only been down here three months. In his own words, he’d scraped a pass after three years doing a “dossers” degree – he never said in what – at Manchester Uni. He then “followed some bird” down to Stevenage to work in Human Resources. The job ended after three months, the relationship ended even sooner, and before he knew it, he’d joined the police.’

  Now the laughter was genuine. Warren found himself smiling; he could almost hear Grimshaw’s voice.

  ‘We were together from the day we started. Shaun is the only person I know who would think it entirely acceptable to turn up on his first day at training college in a Man City shirt, hungover, smelling of beer and wearing too much aftershave. I knew we were going to get on.’

  Martinez’s eyes were shining, and he wiped his nose with a ragged tissue. ‘We worked beside each other in uniform, before both deciding to join CID. I wanted to be Inspector Morse, Shaun was “sick of dealing with dickheads on a Saturday night”.’

  Martinez paused, his voice softening. ‘He revelled in being crude and loud, and became more northern the longer he lived down south, but he was probably the brightest bloke I knew. He loved to take the piss, but he was generous and kind when he wanted to be. He was bloody useless in the betting shop, but he’d always get a round in if he won anything. I’m going to miss him.’

  A chorus of muted ‘hear, hears’ went around the room. A few colleagues stepped forward to shake Martinez’s hand, or give him a hug.

  Finally, Martinez stepped back, and raised his voice. ‘Shaun was killed by Frankie Cullen, probably because his brother Paddy told him to. But they’re just the hired help; neither of them could find their arse with both hands. Stevie Cullen was running a profitable modern slavery business, until he was killed because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. But again, he couldn’t do that on his own. Somewhere out there is the man behind all of this. A bloke we know only as “Northern Man”. All we have his mobile phone number, but let’s bring this fucker down.’

  ‘Shaun’s parents will be here after lunch,’ said Warren. ‘Do you want to come with me to meet them?’

  Martinez and Warren were sitting in Warren’s office.

  Martinez sighed. ‘Yeah, I think I should. I knew him the best.’

  ‘Have you ever met them before?’ asked Warren.

  ‘No, funnily enough. He talked about them of course, Cathy and Bill, but we’ve never met. All I really knew about them was that they used to run a small newspaper business in the town centre, but they went bust after the 1996 bombing. He popped in to see them when we drove up to Manchester to pick up Anica Vuković, but I didn’t go with him.’

  Warren puffed his lips out. ‘Does he have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No, he’s an only child.’

  Martinez looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know the code to Shaun’s locker. We’ll wa
nt to empty it in case there’s anything we need to give to his parents.’

  ‘I’ll contact security,’ said Warren. ‘Whilst we’re waiting though, we should empty his desk drawers as well.’ He didn’t relish the job. He’d emptied Gary Hastings’ desk and had ended up dry-heaving in the toilets. He hoped he didn’t have the same reaction this time.

  ‘No time like the present,’ he said, forcing himself to stand.

  Security met them beside Grimshaw’s desk. It was, Warren thought, a reflection of the man himself: somewhat messy, and apparently disorganized. Underneath the desk, to the right of where Grimshaw’s knees would have been, was a three-drawer desk unit. Locked with a simple key, it was suitable for personal belongings and non-sensitive, private correspondence.

  ‘He reckoned he could find and identify anything on there,’ said Martinez, as he picked up Grimshaw’s favourite Manchester City mug, emblazoned with ‘Winners 2013/14’. As usual, the white porcelain was stained a dark brown colour.

  ‘He said he didn’t trust the dishwasher not to chip it,’ said Martinez. ‘I think he was just a lazy git and liked the taste of mould.’

  The security guard used his master key to open the drawer. Beside them, Rachel Pymm appeared holding a large Tupperware box.

  ‘It doesn’t seem right to put all his belongings in a bin bag,’ she said.

  Clearing a space on the desk, Warren lifted the top drawer out of the unit, and placed it down.

  ‘Anything of a clearly personal nature, place it in the Tupperware box for his parents,’ instructed Warren. ‘Any paperwork or force-related material, place it on this pile so that we can go through it. Anything you’re unsure about, place it on this pile. I’ll take the Tupperware box down to HR for vetting before we give it to his parents.’

  The first drawer had little of interest: a half-empty packet of cigarettes, his Manchester City lighter, a spare tie, some betting slips, and a pile of fifty-pence pieces.

  Warren placed the lighter and the tie in the Tupperware box, and placed the cigarettes and coins to one side. He’d find an envelope for the money.

  He placed the second drawer on top of the first. Lying on the top was a thin, dark green, woollen jumper. Warren lifted the jumper carefully, and folded it more neatly, before putting it into the Tupperware box. Behind him, Pymm inhaled sharply.

  Nestled beneath the jumper, were two mobile phones.

  Forensic IT were in the office within an hour. Wearing gloves, Pete Robertson carefully removed the SIM card from the first phone.

  ‘Neither handset is a smartphone, so there’s no risk of them being deleted remotely, but I’d rather not take any chances.’

  He placed the SIM into a miniature adapter, which he then plugged into his laptop.

  ‘It’ll take a minute to decrypt and read whatever’s on the card,’ he said, as he turned his attention to the second phone. His long, thin fingers carefully manipulated the rear off the back of the second phone, inserting the SIM card into a second adapter, which he plugged into a different USB port on his laptop.

  A quiet beep signalled the completion of the first SIM card. Robertson scribbled the SIM’s phone number onto a Post-it Note.

  A few seconds later, a second beep and the second number appeared on the screen.

  Warren’s heart sank. He didn’t need Rachel Pymm to confirm who the numbers belonged to.

  Neither did Martinez. He sat down heavily. ‘Oh, Shaun mate, what were you doing?’

  One number belonged to Stevie Cullen’s missing mobile phone. The other belonged to the mysterious Northern Man.

  Chapter 58

  Warren felt as if he’d been kicked. He sat in Grayson’s office, drinking coffee. It all made sense now. Joey McGhee, the homeless man who kipped behind the massage parlour had claimed that a man with a northern accent had turned up after the killing, promising to ‘sort everything out’. He’d then been given what they believed to be Stevie Cullen’s work phone. Kourtney Flitton had claimed that the person who bought the drugs from her that contributed to Joey McGhee’s fatal overdose had been a ‘northern man’.

  Both of them were now dead. Grimshaw was at the heart of the case, and his broad Mancunian accent marked him out very clearly as northern. That couldn’t be a coincidence. What else had he tried to cover up?

  Next to Warren sat Ian Bergen. His fellow DCI was similarly pale and shocked.

  ‘Christ, I worked alongside Shaun Grimshaw for years. He wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but corrupt?’ He took a long swig of his coffee.

  ‘Now it’s bloody obvious, isn’t it?’ Putting his coffee cup down, he enumerated the points on his fingers.

  ‘Last year we raided the Cullen farm, alongside HMRC and Home Office observers. There were only a half-dozen workers, all with the correct documentation. The bastards knew we were coming. I managed to persuade the bean counters to cough up enough money to sit someone at the end of their drive for a month and photograph everyone coming and going. Not a bloody dicky bird. The same goes for every other dirty little business we suspected they were involved in: car washes, nail bars, cleaning firms.’

  ‘And Shaun Grimshaw would have been privy to that information?’ asked Grayson.

  Bergen flushed slightly. ‘Yeah, the Cullens were so far down the food chain, they were talked about openly in the office. Anyone on the task force would have been aware of what was happening.’

  Grayson diplomatically chose to say nothing; Bergen and his team would have plenty of questions to answer about their operational security.

  ‘And we think he was on the take?’ said Grayson.

  ‘The envelopes of used twenties hidden in his desk suggest so. Forensics are fast-tracking the fingerprints as we speak, to see who else handled them,’ said Warren.

  ‘What about that pile of fifty-pence pieces you sent off?’ asked Grayson.

  Warren looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I think he was also raiding the communal coffee honesty jar. Since I am the only person who ever puts money in there, if my prints are on the coins, we can probably assume that he stole those as well.’

  ‘Anything a little more relevant?’ asked Grayson, a slight edge to his tone.

  ‘That neatly folded jumper in his bottom drawer had some tiny stains along the cuff that might be blood,’ said Warren. ‘We’ve sent off for fast-track DNA analysis. Smart money’s on Kourtney Flitton, the drug dealer who supplied Joey McGhee, and later “Northern Man” with the drugs that killed him.’

  ‘And was brutally killed in her flat, in what at first glance looks to have been a robbery gone wrong,’ supplied Bergen.

  ‘Wasn’t the murder weapon found at the scene?’ asked Grayson.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Warren, ‘although I’m not too hopeful we’ll find anything useful. The killer was smart enough to stage the scene; I’d be surprised if they were sloppy enough to leave any obvious evidence on the murder weapon.’

  ‘Every contact leaves a trace,’ quoted Grayson. ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’

  Bergen shook his head again. ‘I just can’t believe it. Shaun Grimshaw not only corrupt, but also involved in two murders.’

  ‘He also tried to get me thrown off the case,’ said Warren quietly. ‘He was standing in reception when I gave that money to Joey McGhee. Who else would have known to report it anonymously to Professional Standards? Or that there was CCTV footage?’

  ‘Christ.’ Grayson’s voice was tight with fury. ‘He was playing us all.’

  ‘That burner phone we found in his desk was switched on just before we raided the farm,’ said Warren. ‘It was located within fifty metres of the centre of this building. The text tipping off Paddy Cullen wasn’t responded to immediately. If it had been, Paddy and the workers would have been gone before we even got there.’ Warren paused. ‘And Shaun wouldn’t have been shot.’

  ‘We also wouldn’t have known who Northern Man is,’ said Bergen. ‘Serves him right if you ask me.’

  Warren bit his tongue. N
obody in the room had slept for more than a couple of hours, and they were all stressed and tired. He doubted Bergen truly meant his harsh words.

  Warren tried to think back to what Grimshaw had been doing at the time of the phone call. Had he popped outside for one last cigarette before the raid, and made the call then?

  ‘Rachel Pymm is correlating the phone’s historic location data with Shaun’s personal phone. It’s a match so far,’ said Warren.

  ‘So, where does Stevie Cullen’s murder come into all of this?’ asked Grayson.

  ‘Very bad timing,’ said Warren.

  ‘I reckon Grimshaw had a very nice, cosy little relationship going on with Stevie Cullen and almost certainly the rest of the family,’ said Bergen. ‘He kept an eye out for any trouble; he let them know about upcoming raids and probably used his position as a police officer to threaten any of the workers with dire consequences if they didn’t play ball.’

  ‘Which would explain why Silvija Wilson and her two nieces are too scared to speak to us,’ interjected Grayson.

  ‘Or Annie Vuković,’ said Warren. ‘Bloody hell, that poor woman. I sent Shaun up to Manchester to bring her back after her arrest. She must have been terrified when he turned up.’

  ‘Well we weren’t to know,’ said Grayson, firmly.

  ‘From the call logs, it looks as though Wilson had Grimshaw’s number. She must have been beside herself when her nieces phoned and told her what had just happened to Stevie Cullen,’ said Bergen.

  ‘And so in sweeps Shaun to help tidy everything up,’ said Warren.

  ‘Although he wasn’t daft enough to offer to dispose of the clothing and murder weapon,’ noted Grayson. ‘The last thing he’d want is any trace evidence from Cullen ending up on his clothes.’

  ‘Mind you, holding on to Stevie Cullen’s business phone was a bit of a misstep,’ said Bergen.

  ‘Cheeky sod was first on scene after the uniforms,’ said Warren. ‘No wonder the two sisters kept their mouths shut.’